Listed Places of Worship Scheme

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and Tavistock) (Con)]

It would be an act of cultural, social and spiritual mutilation not to continue with this scheme, which is why I do not think that the Minister will announce later that it will not be continued. My concern is that, although we are here debating this very important but limited scheme, there is on the horizon an even bigger problem with which the Government may have to grapple.

My concern, if I may say so, is not for the great cathedrals of this country that will always attract their supporters—my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) represents one of the greatest cathedrals—but for the small parish churches. They are small arks that have existed down the centuries as a repositories of the spiritual aspiration, the emotions, and the cultural and historical identities, of rural communities—ancestors have been buried there and pilgrimages paid to their gravesides. One by one, these churches are clinging on only by the efforts of half a dozen or so elderly volunteers, giving up time in the last years of their lives to preserve what has mattered so much to them. What happens when those volunteers go? We are seeing it already in Torridge and Tavistock. Churches are closing—I saw the Bishop of Exeter the other day to discuss it.

This scheme alone will not cause the survival of those extraordinary buildings so precious to our culture, our history and our nation. I implore the Minister to give thought to what should happen when these places of worship close. Are they to be converted into housing, often surrounded by open burial grounds? Not likely. We need to give thought to what will happen to these wonderful places, though not now sacred perhaps in some cases when they are closed, but still precious to the community’s identity and to our national inheritance. I know that the Minister will not discontinue the scheme; I would be astonished if he committed such an act of philistine vandalism, putting at risk all these extraordinary buildings for the sake of a few million pounds.

I ask the Minister to consider, “What next?” Let us not stop just at this. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has a private Member’s Bill, the Exemption from Value Added Tax (Listed Places of Worship) Bill, on repair VAT. It is time that we considered what more can be done for these buildings and not only for the buildings—which are simply bricks and mortar, stone, with wonderful cultural artefacts within them—but for what they represent: the many hopes and aspirations of so many thousands of people, even if they do not now because

“The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full,”

but now is suffering from that

“melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”.

I know the Minister knows exactly that to which I refer. I have complete confidence in him and I look forward to his statement this afternoon.